PROTECTING OUR FREEDOM

Pantex nuclear warhead facility

Hello friends! The Pantex Plant, located northeast of Amarillo, Texas, is the nation’s primary facility for the final assembly, dismantlement and maintenance of nuclear weapons. Pantex is one of six production facilities in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Security Enterprise. We are grateful to the United States for its generous support in order to maintain security and peace in Europe. Stay vigilant folks! Together we must fight terrorism in all it's evil, and report suspicious activities to the authorities. Have a very good day!

Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Depart- ment of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and effective nu- clear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad

Retired Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, the NNSA Administrator

Here he is shown in April 2014 following his swearing-in ceremony as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. (NNSA photo) Until retiring in 2011, Klotz was a United States Air Force Lieutenant General who served the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, left, is shown with his wife, Nancy, and Energy Secre- tary Ernest Moniz after being sworn in today as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and undersecretary of nuclear security for the Department of Energy.

DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY

"Our focus is to keep WMD out of the hands of terrorists and other enemies by locking down, monitoring, and destroying weapons and weapons related materials."

"We also assist Combatant Commanders with their plans and responses to WMD events and develop and deliver cutting-edge technologies to assist with all of these endeavors."  

  The Defense Threat Reduction Center at the McNamara Headquarters Complex, Fort Belvoir, Virginia

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency DTRA is an agency within the United States Depart- ment of Defense and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction chemical biological radiological nuclear and high explosives.

DTRA's main func- tions are threat reduction threat control combat support and technology development. The DTRA is headquartered in Fort Belvoir Virginia. DTRA employs 2,000 civilian and military per- sonnel at more than 14 locations around the world including Russia Kazakhstan Azerbaijan Uzbekistan Georgia and Ukraine.



          Shari Durand, Acting Director DTRA

Shari Durand, a member of the senior executive service (SES), is the Acting Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD), co-located at Fort Belvoir, Va. DTRA/SCC-WMD safeguards America and its allies from weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosives) by providing capabilities to reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat, and mitigate its effects.

Even though DTRA, SCC-WMD and the SJFHQ-E are co-located on Ft. Belvoir, Va., they each fall under a different chain of command within the Department of Defense. As a combat support agency, DTRA is responsible to the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs), who in turn is responsible to the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Similarly, SCC-WMD and the SJFHQ-E are elements of the U.S. Strategic Command, one of ten unified commands within the Department of Defense



       Rear. Admiral Scott Jarabek
       U.S. Navy
      Deputy Director

Rear Admiral Scott Jarabek is Deputy Director of both the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and USSTRATCOM Center for Combating WMD (SCC-WMD), and Commander, USSTRATCOM Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination (SJFHQ-E) of Weapons of Mass Destruction, all headquartered on Fort Belvoir, Va. DTRA’s mission is to safeguard the U.S. and its allies from WMD, specifically chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear /high-yield explosive threats by providing the means to prevent and counter WMD proliferation and reduce, eliminate, and mitigate their effects. 

  

  Chief Master Sgt. Timothy Horn
    U.S. Air Force
   Command Sr. Enlisted Leader

U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Timothy Horn is the Command Senior Enlisted Leader to the Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD), and to the commander of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Elimination of WMD (SJFHQ-E), all located on Fort Belvoir, Virginia. 

U.S. Strategic Command Center

   for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD)

The President’s National Security Strategy to combat Weapons of Mass Destruction describes WMD in the hands of hostile states and terrorists as one of the greatest security challenges facing the United States.

Two policy documents issued by the Department of Defense (DoD) in 2006 – the 2006 Quadrennial Review and the National Military Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction – both reaffirmed the need for the Department of Defense to continue to develop an integrated and comprehensive approach to counter the threat of WMD. 

Formally established in August 2005, the USSTRATCOM Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction is co-located with DTRA at Fort Belvoir, Va. Kenneth A. Myers serves as both the director of SCC-WMD and DTRA. The Center achieved full operational capability on Dec. 31, 2006.

Standing Joint Force Headquarters

   for WMD Elimination (SJFHQ-E)

Established in February 2012, the USSTRATCOM Standing Joint Force Headquarters for WMD Elimination is co-located with DTRA and SCC-WMD at Ft. Belvoir, Va. The SJFHQ-E is commanded by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Lucas Polakowski, who also serves as the Deputy Director of SCC-WMD.

The mission of the SJFHQ-E is to plan and train to enable the command and control of WMD elimination operations in support of Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs). On order, the SJFHQ-E deploys to augment an existing headquarters to provide the core of a Joint Task Force headquarters that conducts operations to control, defeat, disable, and dispose of an adversary's WMD.

DEFENSE THREAT REDUCTION AGENCY

USSTRATCOM CENTER FOR COMBATING WMD AND STANDING JOINT FORCES HEADQUARTERS-ELIMINATION

Y-12 OAK RIDGE NATIONAL SECURITY COMPLEX

The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Y-12 National Security Complex, operated by Babcock & Wilcox Y-12 (B&W Y-12) and secured by WSI-Oak Ridge

PANTEX EAST nuclear war head facility

Since 1991, Pantex has safely dismantled thousands of weapons retired from the stockpile by the military and placed the resulting plutonium pits in interim storage. Operations at Pantex are primarily conducted on 2,000 acres of the 18,000-acre site. Pantex has approxi- mately 650 buildings, including specialized facilities in which maintenance, modification, disassembly, and assembly operations are conducted.

PANTEX PLANT nuclear assembly cell

The Pantex Plant maintains its own water-treatment, sewage, and steam-generating plants. Five wind turbines, each over 400 feet tall, generate enough power to support more than 60 percent of the Pantex Plant’s annual energy.  Bechtel Consolidated Nuclear Security (BCNS) manages and operates the facility along with the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennes- see under a single contract from the U.S. Department of Energy/NNSA. 

Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC

Mr. Morgan Smith

(Feb. 1, 2016)

President and Chief Executive Officer, Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC

Morgan Smith is the president and the chief executive officer of Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC, which is responsible for the management and operation of the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A Bechtel executive, Smith joined CNS in 2014 to serve as the CNS chief operating officer and manage the operations of both sites.

Smith has more than 36 years of prior technical and managerial leadership experience within the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. He performed significant roles in planning and implementing the consolidation of the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory into a single organization and, in 2014, applied that experience to initiate the consolidation of Pantex and Y-12 under one U.S. Department of Energy contract. 

Below: The Manhattan Project, Y12 Calutron Operators. The word "Calutron" comes from CALifornia University CycloTRON to recognize that it was designed by Ernest. O. Lawrence.

A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of Uranium. It was developed by Ernest O. Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the Cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence's institution, the University of California, where it was invented.

Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 Uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge Tennessee. The enriched Uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima, 6 August 1945.

CLICK PICTURE AND PLAY

Berkeley Lab Founder Ernest O. Lawrence Demonstrates the Cyclotron Concept 

Ernest O. Lawrence, UC Berkeley’s first Nobel Laureate, circa 1950s. The building behind contains the 184-inch cyclotron, an ancestor to the Large Hadron Collider. Today, the same building houses Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Advanced Light Source.

LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL or LBL), commonly referred to as Berkeley Lab, is a United States National Laboratory located in the Berkely Hills near Berkeley, California that conducts scientific research on behalf of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is managed and operated by the University of California.

After the war, Lawrence maintained strong government and military ties at his lab, which became incorporated into the new system of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) now Department of Energy, DOE National Laboratories. For security purposes, classified weapons research was assigned to the more isolated locations, the  Los Alamos National Laboratory, established during the war, in New Mexico.

 Berkeley: The 60-inch cyclotron

The new laboratory at Livermore. Livermore, about an hour's drive southeast of Berkeley, was established at a former navla air station in 1952 by Lawrence and Edward Teller. Weapons-related and collaborative research continued at Berkeley Lab until the 1970s, however. Shortly after the death of Lawrence in August 1958, the UC Radiation Laboratory (both branches) was renamed the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. The Berkeley location became Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1971.

Alpha 1 racetrack, Uranium 235 electromagnetic separation plant, Manhattan Project, Y-12 Oak Ridge

           PANTEX NUCLEAR WEAPONS                     PRODUCTION FACILITY AMARILLO TEXAS

The Pantex Plant is the primary United States nuclear weapons assembly and dis- assembly facility and maintains the safety, security and reliability of the nations nu- clear weapons stockpile.



The facility is located on a 16,000 acre 65 km^2, 27 km northeast of Amarillo, in Car- son County, Texas in the Panhandle of Texas.

The plant is managed and operated for the United States Department of Energy by Consolidated Nuclear Security and Sandia National Laboratories.

Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC (CNS) is composed of the member companies

BECHTEL CONSOLIDATED NUCLEAR SECURITY, LLC (BCNS) - 2014-17

A Bechtel-led partnership began managing and operating Pantex and Y-12 for the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration in July 2014. Consolidated Nuclear Security was selected last to manage and operate the nuclear security facilities but the transition was put on hold while the contract award was reviewed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security,  LLC  has been directed by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration to immediately resume transitioning to take over the management and operation of the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Lockheed Martin Services Inc.

  Orbital ATK Inc.

SOC LLC

with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. as a teaming subcontractor.

PANTEX nuclear assembly plant

Nuclear bomb B53 small

Pantex workers with B61 gravity bomb

THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION

In 1951, at the request of the  Atomic Energy Commission the National Nuclear Secu- rity Administration (NNSA), the Army exercised a recapture clause in the sale contract and reclaimed the main plant and 10,000 acres (40 km²) of surrounding land for use as a nuclear weapons production facility.

The Atomic Energy Commission refurbished and expanded the plant at a cost of $25 million. The remaining 6,000 acres (24 km²) of the original site were leased from Texas Tech in 1989.The Pantex Plant was operated by Procter & Gamble from 1951 to 1956, Mason & Hanger from 1956 to 2001, and Babcock & Wilcox from 2001 to 2014. The plant employed about 3,600 people in 2010 and had a budget of $600 million for fiscal year 2010.

Workers Pantex Plant

Pantex plant nuclear assembly cell

Guarding train loaded with nuclear warheads

Mark Meyer, training coordinator and field engineer at Sandia

US most powerful bomb being dismantled

Production of plutonium cores, triggers for nuclear weapons, is expected to resume

Pantex workers roll away a B-83 trainer assembly in this undated photo. The B-83 is a high-yield thermonuclear nuclear bomb assembled at Pantex.

  Minuteman IIIB52 bombers readyThe Pantex mission is Securing America as the NNSAS production integrator and provider of the nuclear deterrent to the Department of DefenseDyess AFB

Mark Meyer, training coordinator and field engineer at Sandia

US most powerful bomb being dismantled

Production of plutonium cores, triggers for nuclear weapons, is expected to resume

Pantex workers roll away a B-83 trainer assembly in this undated photo. The B-83 is a high-yield thermonuclear nuclear bomb assembled at Pantex.

  Minuteman IIIB52 bombers readyThe Pantex mission is Securing America as the NNSAS production integrator and provider of the nuclear deterrent to the Department of DefenseDyess AFB

Mark Meyer, training coordinator and field engineer at Sandia

US most powerful bomb being dismantled

Production of plutonium cores, triggers for nuclear weapons, is expected to resume

Pantex workers roll away a B-83 trainer assembly in this undated photo. The B-83 is a high-yield thermonuclear nuclear bomb assembled at Pantex.

Mark Meyer, training coordinator and field engineer at Sandia

US most powerful bomb being dismantled

Production of plutonium cores, triggers for nuclear weapons, is expected to resume

Pantex workers roll away a B-83 trainer assembly in this undated photo. The B-83 is a high-yield thermonuclear nuclear bomb assembled at Pantex.

  Minuteman IIIB52 bombers ready